Introduction

While we've got a massive amount of Intel Z77 motherboards surrounding us at the moment, we've still got a mountain of latest and greatest video cards that we need to look at. Over the coming weeks you'll no doubt see a large array of both motherboards and video cards along with the odd kit of RAM here as more and more companies bring Z77 specific memory to the table.

The latest video card to sneak into the pile between a bunch of motherboards comes from PowerColor and is part of the popular PCS+ series. While the series has been around for a while, we haven't had much of a chance to look at it many times, so we're looking forward to seeing what's on offer from this variant that is paired with one of our favorite GPU models at the moment; the AMD Radeon HD 7970.

With recent price drops to make the HD 7000 series more aggressive against the latest NVIDIA offering (GeForce GTX 680), we're looking forward to seeing what the latest PowerColor video card is capable of doing. Of course there are a few things we need to do before we get into the performance side of things.

The first thing we want to do is take a look at the package and see what's going on in terms of bundle when it comes to the PCS+ HD 7970. Once that's done we'll take a closer look at the video card before we look at the specifications.

Because we've not only looked at a few HD 7970s already, but also because this is a modified higher end version, we'll be taking the time to overclock the video card today to see what we can really get out of it. We'll then quickly head in to our testbed before we get into the performance side of things at our overclocked speeds.

Package

We've got a fairly feature packed box that opens up and gives us a wealth of information while also giving us a peak at the video card. We've got loads of percentages plastered over the box telling us that the PCS+ offering is better at doing this, that and everything else in between.

As for the bundle we've got a usual manual regarding the VORTEX II fan, a quick install guide, driver CD, CrossFire bridge, DVI to VGA connector, 6-pin to 8-pin PCIe power connectors along with a mini DP to DP and MiniDP to DVI connector to round off the bundle. A healthy bundle indeed.

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